Beginning to Raw Feed...I Need Some Reassurance here please!

Hey Jamiya, you're back!!
I don't know if I can ever get to the whole carcass thing or not, especially since I live in an apartment, and the neighbors might freak!!
But Rusty is taking very well to the raw thing. IN fact, he is starting to prefer it..... I had been feeding him a small amount of Canidae canned food each morning to give him his Linatone supplement, and he is refusing it now....but just let me get a chicken neck, wing, etc. out of the fridge....He gets WAY excited and runs to the deck...where he gets to eat it. I also found a really good sale on some pre package raw meals this weekend, so for now I'm going to feed him a portion of that and some bones or chicken parts each day. He's really getting buff and muscular on this stuff!! I'm getting so I freak a little less at all of the bone crunching also :lol:

 

This is sort of gross, but I was picturing little tiny Rusty just eating away at some giant cow carcass or something.
With the meat and eggs do you wash it off first or just give it to them?
Sorry for my dumbness, I really would like to put Luther (and Dale, my cat) on raw but I really have no space, but maybe when I go back to America.

 

With the raw chicken pieces I rinse and rub them under running water, I don't know if that makes any difference or not, but when I used to work in healthcare we were always told that it's the friction of rubbing your hands together that gets rid of the most germs and bacteria, not the soap---so in my head I'm thinking that might get rid of some of the bacteria---but that's just me, probably it doesn't make a lot of difference. Maybe some of the others can tell you if they wash the food first.
I haven't given hinm the egg yet, so far I've bought pre mixed meals that have the egg already in them. And I also have a little of the space issue, since we live in an apartment. So when Rusty gets chicken parts and beefy bones it's out on the deck he goes---but he's okay with that. I sit out there with him to monitor his bone crunching, so it's sort of a bonding time, I guess.
And what you said about picturing Rusty gnawing on a big carcass--- My roommate and I were just watching a show about a woman that raises wolves, and she was talking about how she throws whole deer carcasses in their pens for them---- and we were joking about how that's where we would be with Rusty eventually--- throw a deer carcass out on the deck, and let him go at it :lol:

 

Some people I know do that with a deer or goat carcass.

Why are you going to grind Rusty's food? He will benefit more from it if he is allowed to crunch the bones himself. And bigger pieces are better - so whole slabs of meat are better than ground meat.

If you feed him a large cut (bigger than his head) you can always feed some small things the next day so he doesn't get fat.

Dogs should always be supervised when eating, no matter what sort of diet they are on. I'm not saying I stand and stare at mine while eating, but I do keep an eye on them out the window while I am going about my work. This is true for kibble-eaters as well.

I had to sit with Bonnie while she ate last night because my husband has a tarp set up to shelter him while he works on the house and she was scared of it flapping in the wind. I wish I had filmed it because she did a classic job on this big chicken leg quarter. It was fun to watch, actually! She crunched some up, and she pulled skin off using her front teeth and pinning the rest down with a foot. Seeing her crunch through the leg bone at the very end was humbling as well. Nala makes shorter work of her food.

There are some good photos of dogs (and cats) eating raw stuff here: http://www.rawfeddogs.net/PhotoGalleries/ViewPhotos.php?added=7

 

I guess I am wanting to grind and mix up part of what I feed him so that I can mix things...like egg, supplements, organ meat, etc., so that I'm sure he's getting a balanced diet....And partly I guess because it's difficult to feed him things like the whole egg, etc., when I don't have a yard to let him eat it in. The deck works okay for eating the meat and bones, but I don't know about the rest. I figure if I can mix all that together and feed him, along with the chicken parts, bones, and raw hunks of meat, it should work out okay.
Where is a good place to get meaty bones? I have a tough time finding them here..... do you buy meat from the regular grocery store, or from a butcher, or what? Just curious what everyone else that feeds raw does.

 

You should be able to just hand him an egg on the deck. Be careful, though, because I had some egg soak into the deck and the dogs chewed up part of the board because it was so tastey!

With eggs, you can also crack it and throw the egg and the shell into a doggie dish. I can do this inside fairly safely - I just watch to make sure they don't carry the shell around. You could do this outside as well.

Organ meats I put in the doggie bowl in the morning. They eat this about every other morning. On the off days, canned fish and egg or something like that goes in the bowl. Bonnie eats inside and I set Nala's bowl right outside the back door, since I have to feed them separately. For the evening meal, they eat their meaty bones outside on tie-out lines.

The only supplements I do are garlic and fish oil, which I hand to them like treats. I make them sit and then feed them each their tablet. The fish oil comes in gel tabs and the first day they had some trouble with it. Lesson learned - do NOT feed gel caps of fish oil on carpet if your dogs are not used to them! They spit them out several times and I think some oil got on the carpet because they kept going back to lick at it. I was afraid they would eat the carpet so I cleaned it really good with everything I could find and it seemed to work. Now I give them their fish oil outside or in the kitchen on the linoleum. They generally chew it a few times and swallow now, instead of spitting it out.

I still get my meaty bones from grocery stores, but it's getting too expensive. Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market is my favorite place so far. Talk to butchers, meat processors, the meat guy at the grocery store, etc. Try to find restaurant suppliers and ethnic markets. I was given the name of a butcher who processes the animals hunters bring in and I am going to give him a call. Often you can get the stuff people don't want fairly cheap, especially if you buy in bulk. I am going to ask him for organ meats and anything that comes on a bone - pork necks, beef necks, heads, etc. You just have to make sure there is enough meat left on the bones, and if not supplement with some boneless meat.

You might also try this list and see if there are any suppliers or co-ops in your area: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivoreFeed-Supplier/. I didn't have much luck with it, but you live in a more progressive part of the country.

You can also try to find local farms that might be willing to sell you stuff. I get rabbit from a local farm, but most of their stuff is too expensive. I found them by searching online but I can't remember what I searched for!

 

Sounds good!... I'll have to give an egg a try tonight.... I'm not so sure he's going to know what to do with it, but he could surprise me. He was a little confused about the raw meat thing at first, but now he's preferring it. I'm also at an advantage in that my dog is a lot smaller than most of you have, so the cost isn't so big of a problem.....if I get creative, I can feed him prety well without cost too much.

 

Nala was hysterical the first time I handed her an egg. She took it and stood there staring at me, holding it in her mouth. She finally ran off and started tossing it in the air, like she does with the nuts that fall from our trees. It actually didn't break for several tosses. It finally broke and that's when she discovered that it is food.

Now she carries the egg off and lies down and carefully punctures it with her front teeth and starts to lick everything out of it. Sometimes she eats the shell and sometimes she leaves it.

Bonnie has never had an egg handed to her - I will have to try sometime. She gets to eat inside in the morning, so I just crack the egg in her bowl and throw the shell in with it. Sometimes she eats the shell and sometimes she does not.

I buy organic eggs from free-range chickens, no antibiotics, etc. It's one of the few organic things I can afford to buy.

 

That's funny....I'm thinking I'll start Rusty with breaking the egg into a bowl, and see how he does. Are pork spare ribs okay? I see my local store has a good sale on them right now, so I thought I might try him on pork. And with canned fish..... it's cooked isn't it? Or is there some kind of canned fish you cna get that's raw?

 

Are you near Spokane? Someone on that supply list posted this:

 

Nope....clear on the other side of the state from Spokane....I live about 10 miles north fo Seattle.

 

Ah! I thought you were on the other side of the state for some reason. Ummm, can I come live with you?? I love it out there. I grew up in Longview, WA.

 

Cool.... someone who knows this part of the country! It"s beautful here...sometimes I forget how great it is until I leave for awhile. I wish so many people weren't findng that out though.... it's getting so the highways are overcrowded, and not so many jobs anymore!